I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.

For as long as I can remember my dad made ice cream himself. From scratch and when I was a young kid, with no ice cream churner. And so, from a young age I have learned that making ice cream, really is very easy. All it needs is a boat load of love and some patience. I'm planning to share some of my favourites over the coming weeks, but lets start with the most basic of ice creams, vanilla.

This recipe comes from an old eighties cookbook, many times adjusted. It is incredibly low on sugar compared to the original and also less eggy. After all the cream and the flavour are the stars of the show.

Ingredients: 

500ml cream (or 250 cream/250 soy cream light)

1 fresh vanilla pod

2 egg yolks

50 grams of fine caster sugar

Put the cream in a pan with the lengthwise sliced open vanilla pod and gently heat over a medium fire. Bring to the boil and let simmer for five minutes. Turn off the heat and let the mixture sit for a few hours (preferably over night).

Remove the vanilla pod, scrape some seeds out and put them in the cream. Reheat your cream, but don't bring to the boil! Whisk loose the egg yolks and while stirring add three tablespoons of the warm cream to the eggs. Remove pan from heat and add egg mixture, keep stirring. Return pan to fire and gently stir it until mixture starts thickening a bit. Add the sugar and stir until desolved.

Let your mixture cool while stirring occassionally. Pour your mixture through a sieve into a freezer proof container (or your ice cream churner). Put the ice cream in your freezer and stir every half hour until it starts to freeze then four more times every fifteen minutes, then leave to freeze. 

You have just made vanilla ice cream congrats!!

You can also make cinnamon ice cream with this recipe, just replace the vanilla pod with two or three cinnamon sticks!

(photos to follow)

*title of this post blatantly copied from that wonderful Mars ice cream bar tv advert!